Monday, July 12, 2004

Librarians in Pornography While I am in the topic of naked librarians (see my last post) I might as well blog this site. It is a site put up to share the results of study done that was presented at the 1990 Conference of the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association in Toronto. The author (Dan Lester) looked at 49 pornographic paperback novels that dealt with librarians and presented his conclusions. There are also some detailed annotations of some of the novels.

From the site:

This survey of hard core pornographic paperback novels covers 49 books published between 1978 and 1988. As most have been purchased in the western United States or by mail from western distributors, west coast publishers predominate. There are undoubtedly many other novels of this type that have been distributed in other parts of the country or that have escaped the my notice; for example, other hard core novels may describe libraries but lack titles or covers suggesting that fact. I am interested in purchasing or borrowing any pornographic materials (book, magazine, article, film, video, etc.) from any era that describe libraries or librarians in order to expand this compilation. Sources will be kept confidential if desired.

In all of these novels 90 percent or more of the text is explicit description of all types of sexual activities. The remaining passages that describe a setting and characters are the subject of the annotations. Unless otherwise noted, all of the novels contain passages describing vaginal, oral, and anal sex in a multitude of positions, and lesbian sex. The characters, most frequently female, portrayed as librarians are always library employees, but may actually be paraprofessional, clerical, or student assistants. The libraries described include public, academic, high school, and special libraries of a variety of types and sizes. Some library descriptions seem to have been written by librarians or by regular library users, as they're quite realistic; other authors have apparently never even been in a library. The annotations further describe the characters and settings, give a brief plot summary, and provide information about sexual activities other than those mentioned above, such as male homosexual sex, bondage, violence, rape, and animal sex.